News and Events from and for the Division of Science, Brandeis University
Save the Date for SciFest!
SciFest, the Division of Science’s annual celebration of undergraduate research, is a poster session featuring work done by undergraduates in Brandeis laboratories each summer. This is a capstone event for the undergraduate researchers where they can present the results of their research to peers, grad students, and faculty.
Join us for the SciFest XI which will be held on Thursday, August 11, 2022 in the Shapiro Science Center.
With increasing vaccination rates and declining positive Covid test rates, the Division of Science is looking forward to a vibrant, in-person summer undergraduate research program kicking off right after Memorial Day.
The Division of Science summer program pairs first-hand research, community building, and guidance from Brandeis graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to provide undergraduate students a high-quality research experience. Past summer undergraduates have gone on to make substantial contributions (even as first authors!) to peer-reviewed research publications in fields such as materials chemistry (Shi et al., “Sunlight-activated phase change materials for controlled heat storage and triggered release”), molecular biology (Lamper et al., “A phosphorylation-regulated eIF3d translation switch mediates cellular adaptation to metabolic stress”) and neuroscience (He et al., “Rapid adaptation to Elevated Extracellular Potassium in the Pyloric Circuit of the Crab, Cancer borealis”).
For Summer 2021, we are excited to announce that 58 Brandeis undergraduate researchers will be supported through the Division of Science programs and funding sources including NSF, NIH, and generous Brandeis alumni and foundation donors.
Additionally, the MRSEC Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program will support 6 undergraduate students from Hampton University for a 10-week, hands-on research program that runs in parallel with the MRSEC Summer Materials Undergraduate Research Fellowship. REU participants are mentored by MRSEC graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and contribute to materials science research efforts on Brandeis’s campus.
We will conclude the summer with SciFest, our annual summer poster session showcasing undergraduate research in the sciences, on August 5. Check the SciFest website for updates about the time and details for the session.
Congratulations to all fellowship recipients!
The Division of Science is pleased once again to announce the availability of Traineeships for Undergraduates in Computational Neuroscience through a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Traineeships will commence in summer 2021 and run through the academic year 2021-22.
From former trainee Dahlia Kushinksy’s first-author paper published in Journal of Experimental Biology, “In vivo effects of temperature on the heart and pyloric rhythms in the crab, Cancer borealis”
Please apply to the program by March 2, 2021 at 6 pm to be considered.
Traineeships in Computational Neuroscience are intended to provide intensive undergraduate training in computational neuroscience for students interested in eventually pursuing graduate research. The traineeships will provide approximately $5000 in stipend to support research in the summer, and $3000 each for fall and spring semesters during the academic year. Current Brandeis sophomores and juniors (classes of ’22, ’23) may apply. To be eligible to compete for this program, you must
Interested students should apply online (Brandeis login required). Questions may be addressed to Steven Karel <divsci at brandeis.edu> or to Prof. Paul Miller.
In spite of all the uncertainty about the summer to come, it is time for Brandeis Science undergraduates doing research to think about applying for summer fellowships. The Division of Science, through a variety of sources, will likely have enough money to support roughly the same number of students as in recent years. For the most part, funding comes in the form of $5000 stipends that are paid directly to students to support them while working in labs in the summer.
While there is a variety of funding mechanisms, students can apply via a single unified application.
To apply, students will need to have a commitment from a faculty mentor to supervise their research in Summer 2021. Applications will be due on March 2, 2021. Students will need a single letter of reference from their faculty mentor.
Last Fall the Biology department mounted a new course (BIOL 152B), the Virus Hunter Lab. This course combines practical experience in the lab with computer based approaches in bioinformatics. Students in the class isolated a type of virus that infects bacteria called a bacteriophage. In the wet lab, they learned basic microbiology techniques for isolating the viruses and basic molecular biology techniques for extracting the DNA of the viral genomes. With the biological material in hand the class prepared next generation sequencing libraries. The students assembled and annotated the complete genome of two previously unknown bacteriophage using next generation sequencing data from the samples they prepared. To find out more about it you can read their paper. Grad students Meghan Harris (MCB), their TA, and Tereasa Ho (Biotechnology) along with the inaugural group of undergraduate students are all authors on a paper recently published in the journal Microbiology Resource Announcements (MRA).
Harris MT, Ho TC, Fruchtman H, Garin ME, Kubatin V, Lu T, Xue L, Marr MT. Complete Genome Sequences of Two Vibrio natriegens Bacteriophages. Microbiology Resource Announcements. 2020;9(45).
Electron microscope image of the novel bacteriophage (VH2), photo by Jesse Cochrane
Congratulations to Shinji Rho who has been named a 2020 Goldwater Scholar. The Goldwater Scholarship is a national scholarship designed to encourage outstanding students in their sophomore and junior year to pursue research careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering.
Shinji is currently a junior. Her project at Brandeis is on a transcriptional activator Gal4, which binds to upstream activating sequence (UAS) sites in the yeast genome to promote transcription. Previous studies have shown that dwell time of Gal4 on the UAS is significantly longer in purified systems than in cells. She is interested in finding the reason for this dwell time difference using single-molecule light microscopy. The findings of her project will provide a more realistic view of how transcription activation system behaves when nuclear proteins are present.
Shinji plans to obtain a PhD degree in cancer biology, ultimately conducting research on developing more accurate and easily accessible breast cancer diagnosis methods.
Her mentor is Jeff Gelles, Aron and Imre Tauber Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology.
Seminars PubMed: Brandeis MCB seminarsBrandeis University | Blogs @ Brandeis | Write a Blog
Welcome Guest | Login (Brandeis Members Only)